Why I Choose Ownership over Unlimited Access

Sneaker Pimp’s “Becoming X”

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Yep, that’s the whole post. The entire reason I buy almost every track of music I enjoy is because of Sneaker Pimp’s “Becoming X.”

Fine, that’s not a very good blog post, so let’s rewind.

The Beginning

I am, supposedly, not a young woman. I receive compliments suggesting otherwise, but as the kids say, I’m from the 1900s. You might be thinking, “So what? So am I!” Well, while music is a universal constant that transcends generations, the way we listen to it certainly is not.

There was a time when the only way to hear music was to create it yourself or enjoy it with friends. Eventually, we progressed to attending concerts, assuming we could afford the ticket. Then came the phonograph, but let’s skip ahead because this could take a while and I am not that old.

I have fond memories of cassette tapes, but I primarily grew up in the CD and MTV era. Back then, listening to the radio and watching music videos were beloved pastimes. However, my primary mode of enjoying music was through albums. I remember spending $15 per single album at the store or painstakingly recording songs off the radio onto tapes (later onto CD-Rs) to create curated playlists that lasted about an hour. CDs were fantastic—light, easy to carry in bulk, and simple to skip or loop.

Over the years, I went through countless CD binders—some I lost, others were stolen, and many I eventually discarded. We’re talking thousands of plastic disks between those I purchased and those I ripped, especially since I DJed during the CD era.

Even when the iPod era kicked off, it was a similar paradigm for me. Taking my albums and ripping them down so I could have my playlists and albums, and listen to them, now with fewer CD binders, but all in the same manner. One day would be a Meat Beat Manifesto day, and the next would be a Nine Inch Nails day, probably followed by a week of the same three Razed In Black albums before it was time to melt my brain with the Shizit or Ron D Core.

I shared all of this to bring us to my next two points, starting with…

Reason 1: All my Music from the Before Times

I have a vast collection of music, and not just popular, major-label music.

• I have albums from various long-forgotten local groups I got at a show
• I have white label demos from when I was a DJ.
• I have innumerable albums from indie industrial, goth, and noise labels that are long gone.
• I have music friends have made.
• I have music that I have made.
• I have demos, rarities, and bootleg CDs and tracks.
• I have albums from a shoebox of CDs that I don’t even know where they came from.
• I have a bunch of silly fun tracks from Myspace and the great meme music begining of the aughts.
• I have music that was remade and re-released.

None of those tracks will ever ever ever be on streaming platforms. This meant I had two apps for a while. There was Spotify to listen to their music, and then iTunes to store my music; I had to switch between them depending on what I wanted to listen to.

When I used Apple Music with iTunes Match, it allowed me to sync my music so that I could listen to both together in a single interface. However, this was also dangerous, and I lost some music in the process. When iTunes Match believed that it already had a track in its library, it would replace your music with its own copy. For some, this was a way to upgrade old, poorly encoded tracks for free. But it was also a horrible way to lose demos, live versions, or rare recordings.

When I buy all of my music, all of my music, no matter how I sort it or store it, is all in one place.

Reason 2: My Preferred Style of Listening to Music

I prefer to listen to music album by album and artist by artist in a fairly intentional way. You can do that on streaming platforms, but that’s not the focus or behavior of the apps in my experience. They give you all these computer-generated playlists, all based on what they think you want to listen to, or they want you to listen to. I remember that playlists would automatically extend or go into “smart modes,” deciding what they felt should be next at the end.

The way apps prefer to feed people music has also changed how people create and release music. During the 2010s, EPs suddenly became the thing to make, allowing artists to get music out to people more rapidly, and now in the 2020s, it is all about singles. More and more artists I am coming across, especially in the pop space, have careers almost entirely based around pumping out singles without the need to put together a complete and coherent project.

The Sugar High ADHD approach to music is sometimes fun and can help discover new artists, but I still need the time to stop and delve into these artists’ catalogues. Just one song isn’t enough for me; I want to experience the whole of an artist’s work.

This is also why I lived by compilations and soundtracks; they had enough variety, but also served as kick-off points for me to learn more about individual artists’ catalogues. The worst time was when I discovered an artist I loved, only to find that they didn’t have any other music available, or I was unable to come by it. I am looking at you, ATP.

Constantly morphing playlists are the opposite of immersing myself in and truly hearing all the details and flow of an album, which leads to…

Reason 3: Sneaker Pimp’s “Becoming X”, or, I Was Listening to That, Where Did it Go?

It always comes back to Sneaker Pimp’s “Becoming X.” That album was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

I was listening to the album on loop on Apple Music and then the next morning…

It was gone.

I moved on, but later came back to Sneaker Pimp’s “Becoming X” and put it on loop.

But two days later it was gone again.

I was losing my mind.

Content comes and goes when you are streaming music. As licensing deals change, some albums pop on and off repeatedly. That was the actual thing that drove me to the point of deciding that having access to all the music is not worth it to me.

When I own my own files I can listen to them without dealing with licensing or whatever was taking things away.

Reason 4: Streaming Giveth, Streaming Taketh Away (from Artists too)

In the before times, artists either signed on with a major label that dictated their entire music career, or they stacked punk tapes at your local record store for people to buy.

However, in the late 1990s, MP3.com introduced a new indie distribution platform that elevated mixtapes and indie artists to the next level. And indie labels like Cleopatra and Crunch Pod, which were lifting them and putting out CDs and CDRs¹. Then Apple decided to get involved, and that’s what took it from underground swell to zeitgeist.

However, by all reports, streaming has made things far worse for small artists.

Yes, it is now frighteningly easy to upload music to streaming platforms in the name of fraud, harassment, and spam. This causes numerous problems for artists. I think you can easily troll YouTube to find video after video of people discussing the AI flood, algorithms, bots, and fraud, etc. In fact, some are considering this to be reaching a critical point.

To avoid sharing a Rick Beato video,² I will instead share a Venus Theory one on this topic.

Link: It’s Not Just You: Music Streaming Is Broken Now

Ok, When, what Should the Intrepid Reader Do?

1. Buy music
2. Listen intentionally to artists and albums.
3. Curate your own playlists and spend time with the music you enjoy.
4. Consider if any of this matters to you, then do what best aligns with your goals. Not Mine.

I have some planned follow-up posts for this one, covering how I buy music in 2025, and another on how I stream my own music anywhere I am, and how people of different nerd levels can do the same.